Numerous aqueous liquid laundry detergent products are commercially available for the laundering of textiles (e.g. bedding, linens, and/or clothing). These products have traditionally focused on stain-removal and cleaning benefits and could be used in laundry washing machines and/or hand-washing applications. Aqueous laundry detergent compositions are therefore well known in the art and often contain surfactants such as anionic and nonionic surfactants.
More recently, such laundry detergent compositions have been formulated with the inclusion of softness technology, such as cationic hydroxyethylcelluloses, to provide consumers with both cleaning and softness benefits through the wash. Importantly, these formulations allow consumers to avoid utilizing a separate rinse-cycle only fabric enhancer product. Such formulations have become more desirable to consumers.
Perfume and freshness technologies have also been developed for use in aqueous liquid laundry detergents to provide consumers with long-lasting scent on their laundered fabrics. Perfume deposition technologies such as the commercially available LUPASOL may be used with specific perfume raw materials such as delta-damascone to drive perfume deposition to the fabrics and deliver a holistic freshness experience to the consumer.
However, It has now surprisingly been discovered that when certain types of cationic fabric softening materials (such as cationic hydroxyethylcellulose) are combined with certain types of perfume deposition promoting polymers (such as Lupasol HF or WF) in an anionic/nonionic surfactant matrix, that upon storage, undesirable precipitates form, and separate out from the detergent. Such undesirable properties include, for example, precipitates sticking onto the walls of a container as unsightly specks or lumps. The problem of precipitation of cationic hydroxyethylcellulose combined with Lupasol type materials, thereby forming unsightly residues in the product was not previously known and was unexpected since both technologies have the same overall charge (cationic).
It is therefore desirable to offer consumers an even better in-use experience, and desirable to provide good cleaning, softness, and holistic freshness in a single, stable, aqueous laundry detergent composition.